One to One Professional Mentoring
BLOSSOM IN THE WORKPLACE.
LGBTQIA+ young adults deserve to find meaningful and long lasting work. We're ensuring that the future generation of the workforce can blossom authentically in education and employment.
Mentoring & Coaching
At the heart of our free mentoring scheme, we’re proud to offer a queer orientated programme for young adults, from the entire LGBTQIA+ community, aged from 16 to 30 to support them to stay in, or to find, full time education or employment. Our goal is to focus on increasing your chances of finding work that you care about. We do this through direct coaching, work experience, and group workshops. We also focus on providing you with holistic support which takes into account your entire person and identity. We think that this helps to increase your ability to enter work authentically and advocate for your needs as a proud intersectional person.
What to expect
When you first sign up to the scheme we’ll book in an initial call. During this call, we’ll create a small anonymous profile about who you are, what you’re looking to achieve, and what you’ve done to date. This will be a no judgement call designed to make sure you get connected with the perfect mentor! Once we’ve found a mentor for you, then you’ll meet with them to decide what your working relationship will look like, set your initial goals, and explore how they can help you to bloom! Once you’ve started to find some confidence we can then explore internships & job applications!
How we approach mentoring
It’s important that we’re clear from day one – you have the power. It’s up to you how you use our support, if you take our advice, or if you do what you agree. Your mentor will use frameworks to help you come to your own conclusions and leave you to decide if you take action. From the go, our goal is to guide you through decision making processes, not to give you direct instructions. The only condition to continued support is that you have to demonstrate how you’re working towards your targets.
IN ADDITION TO MENTORING
Workshops on Employability and Life Skills.
Every month we’ll provide those on the mentoring scheme, along with other LGBT community members, the opportunities to join us for free workshops! In these workshops, you’ll get hands on experience of different jobs, practical employment advice, and opportunities to meet like-minded LGBTQIA+ young adults who are also entering the world of work or education. This will be a mix of in-person and virtual events, depending on how the workshop is best delivered!
Internships & Volunteer Experience.
We’ll use some of our connections across the corporate world and the third sector to help you find voluntary internships in your dream roles to help build an impressive CV, demonstrate to workplaces your commitment, and help you feel confident that you’re ready to smash your dream job when the time comes. We’ll also invite you to come and experience difference offices, employment styles, and work-life balance through our corporate friends.
Support for Workplaces Employing Queer Young Adults.
Employers who get involved in our scheme will have the ability to access some of our industry leading LGBTQIA+ inclusion training that centres the voices of LGBTQIA+ young adults and supports them to create welcoming environments for the future generation of employees. We’ll also offer bespoke consultancy, workplace assessments, and mentoring partnerships to businesses to ensure that the individuals we place can truly thrive.
WHY OUR SCHEME MATTERS
Over 60% of LGBTQ+ graduates hide their identity when they enter the workforce.
Roughly 2 out of every 5 LGBTQ+ young adults are not in any form of education or work.
57% of LGBTQ+ job seekers left their last job because of anti-lgbt conduct.
A Special Thanks to The National Lottery Community Fund.
This scheme has only been made possible as a result of the generous grant made to Blossom LGBT CIC by the National Lottery Community Fund. The Community Fund is a grant programme for distributing funds raised by the National Lottery for good causes.
Getting Involved
Queer Young Adults
If you’re aged between 16 and 30 years old, then you can register for mentoring right now! Simply fill in the form to the right of this content and you’ll make it onto our waiting list. You can also email Employability@Blossom.lgbt to show your interest.
Once you’ve contacted us, we’ll start the process of connecting you with a mentor. This usually starts with a quick call with our project team. We’ll then put our calls for the appropriate mentor, this may take a few weeks.
Corporate Partners
We are on the look out for businesses and other not for profits who would be interested in joining the scheme either as a partner, to offer the scheme in-house to their graduates or service users. You could support our scheme by providing internship placements or day long workplace experiences, or by joining our upskilling digital workshops.
We’re currently on the hunt for up to three scheme sponsors who will receive D&I support, access to recruitment through our schemes, brand alignment and far more. If you’re interested in partnering or sponsoring our scheme you can email Oscar@Blossom.lgbt
Volunteers & Mentors
Could you spare the equivalent of one working day over the span of a year to make a long lasting impact on the life of an LGBTQIA+ young adult? If you’re a successful LGBTQIA+ or ally professional and would be interested in supporting one of our young adults then we’d love to hear from you.
We’re also on the hunt for workshop, upskilling, and administration support! You could help us create some marketing graphics, plan a workshop, or even write grant applications!
Email Employability@Blossom.LGBT to discuss getting involved.
